The ever-increasing consumption of wine and similar beverages, both in various commercial establishments (e.g., restaurants, bars, lounges, etc.), and in consumers' homes, coupled with growth in consumer perception of wine as an “experience” meant to be paired with proper food or enjoyed though “tastings”, has resulted not only in a growing consumer demand for a wider selection of wines made available in commercial establishments (leading to proliferation of dedicated “wine bar” establishments), but also fueled the desire of many consumers to be able to bring the “wine bar” or equivalent experience to their home.
While restaurants have traditionally relied on bottle purchases by their patrons, leaving only a few low-end wines available for “by the glass” pours from bottles that may remain in use for several days after being opened, due in large part to the inherent changes (e.g., oxidation) in wine over time when exposed to air, eventually leading to deterioration and spoilage. However, in view of the above-noted market trends, many establishments have been nevertheless forced to expand their “by-the-glass” (hereinafter “BTG”) selections to meet consumer demand, but at a greatly increased cost (both due to rapid deterioration of unsealed wine bottles, and due to increased costs in labor in managing a wide-range of BTG pours). Stand-alone bars and lounges have traditionally offered limited wine selections, but in view of the aforementioned trends, they were likewise faced with the same obstacles as the restaurants. Finally, wine bars were forced to deal with the challenge of keeping a sufficiently wide ranging BTG selection by their very nature.
Virtually all attempted solutions to the above challenges involved devices and systems for preservation and/or dispensation of bottled wines, and thus were quite limited in their success due to inherent disadvantages of utilization of bottled wine in a commercial establishment environment, as described in greater detail in the commonly assigned U.S. provisional patent application entitled “SCALABLE MODULAR SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR STORING, PRESERVING, MANAGING, AND SELECTIVELY DISPENSING BEVERAGES”, Ser. No. 61/530,491, which had been incorporated by reference in the '282 application, and which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. The '491 application also notes that while many disadvantages of the use of bottled wine in commercial establishments are clearly overcome by the utilization of larger volume less expensive “wine bags” (often offered in a “wine-in-bag” “bag-in-box” format), to date there has not been a suitable solution offered that would enable commercially practical use of wine-in-bag (hereinafter “WinB”) products in restaurant/bar environments.
Similarly, while some consumers have invested varying degrees resources into wine preservation and/or dispensing systems for their home/office use, as is described in greater detail in the commonly assigned U.S. provisional patent application entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR STORING, PRESERVING AND SELECTIVELY DISPENSING BEVERAGES”, Ser. No. 61/530,503, which had been incorporated by reference in the '282 application, and which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety, a growing number of consumers have also realized the advantages of WinB products, which has led to a growing selection of such products being made available. Nevertheless, as is noted in the '503 application, virtually all commercially available WinB products involved the use of boxes or equivalent containers for the bagged wine with simple lever or pushbutton-operated pouring spouts interfacing with the WinB product in the box/container, which clearly carried additional disadvantages of their own, that various offered solutions have failed to address.
As is noted in both the '491 and '503 applications, the key obstacles to wide-ranging successful use of WinB products in both commercial and consumer environments include, but are not limited to:    the difficulties in preserving and pouring wine from WinB product containers;    the amount of space taken up by WinB products and their containers an especially serious issue for commercial environments where space is at a premium;    the challenge posed in commercial environments by the necessity of metering wine pours of specific volume from the WinB products, and the difficulty in tracking such pours automatically; and    The aesthetic appearance of most WinB products and their containers does permit their use in tastefully decorated commercial and consumer environments.
It would thus be desirable to provide a system and method that resolves all of the disadvantages of previously known WinB products and their dispensing containers. It would further be desirable to provide a system and method that offers heretofore unavailable advantageous features relating to preservation and controlled dispensing of liquids, such as wine, from WinB products or equivalents. It would additionally be desirable to provide a system and method for preserved storage and selective controlled dispensation of liquids, such as wine, that is configurable for use with a variety of WinB products, and their equivalents, that is modular and readily scalable for advantageous utilization in environments ranging from consumer homes to large commercial establishments.